Parenting & Family Quote by Solomon Burke

Burke drops the line like a trapdoor: one second you are in the bright, churned-up machinery of “show business,” the next you’re in the blunt reality of a parent whose kids have been taken. The dash does the heavy lifting, compressing what could be a carefully managed celebrity anecdote into something more jagged and human. “We had some problems” is almost absurdly understated, the kind of minimization people use when the actual story is too hot to hold. That mismatch between mild phrasing and catastrophic event tells you he’s not performing vulnerability; he’s protecting himself from it.

The phrase “during that time” hints at a life lived in eras, marked by before-and-after. Burke doesn’t name kidnappers, motives, outcomes. He doesn’t have to. The omission creates a protective fog and also a moral clarity: the details don’t matter as much as the pivot point. When he says it “changed my whole way of thinking,” it’s not the PR-friendly version of personal growth; it’s the forced recalibration that trauma demands. Suddenly “show business and everything else” reads like a world of distractions, ego, and itinerary -- a place that can look grotesquely small when something real breaks through.

Coming from a soul singer whose public identity depended on voice, charisma, and stagecraft, the quote quietly argues that fame is a costume you can’t wear through grief. It’s a reminder that behind the velvet persona is a person who learned, violently, what matters when the spotlight goes out.